(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a channel selecting system for use in TV receivers which enables a multiple number of images corresponding to different channels to be displayed on the same screen to allow the user to select a desired channel.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, TV receivers have been added with a variety of functions and have become able to offer the user multiple channels of video images from various video sources. With this tendency, i.e., development of television into multi-functions and multi-channels, the operation of channel selection in TV receivers has become more complicated. As a result, the operation of the remote control transmitter also has been getting more complicated.
For example, when a remote control transmitter has channel selection keys each corresponding to a respective channel, the viewer, who has not yet selected a program and needs to find a favorite program, should successively press a number of channel selection keys; a complicated operation.
When a remote control transmitter has up and down keys for channel selection, the viewer selects a favorite program whilst ascending or descending from one channel to the next using these keys. In this case, as the number of channels increases, it takes a longer time to select a desired program, resulting in a poor operability.
In order to improve the operability of such complicated remote control transmitters, some methods have been attempted to support channel selection. For example, in a channel selecting system disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Hei 6 No. 54,267, the image frame or display screen is divided into a plurality of small-sized frame images or sub-frame images, each of which corresponds to a different still image for a channel, enabling the contents of a multiple number of channels to be displayed in parallel.
Although the above conventional channel selecting system can permit the viewer to recognize the images of plural channels all at once, the size of each sub-frame image becomes smaller as the channels to be selected increases in number because the display of each sub-frame image is equally sized. Thus, the conventional configuration results in a view which is difficult to see.